A new start
by bhut
Summary: A response to the mid-January challenge at primevalarchive: another outbreak of the fungus from the future provides the ARC and Helen Cutter with some new opportunities...
1. Chapter 1

**A new start?**

_Disclaimer: All characters belong to Impossible Pictures. ™_

-1-

The time was late Miocene, at least 10 million years ago BC. Helen Cutter was sitting on top of a tall hill (almost a small mountain, one could say), and dispassionately observed a clan of oreopithecus, as the prehistoric apes were recovering from the last night's storm, grazing alongside a herd of prehistoric horses that still regained several extra toes in place of a single one of the modern equids. Neither species of mammal seemed to be perturbed by the last night's element rampage, nor truth to tell, was Helen, as she had been able to experience (and survive) much worse situations than a Miocene thunderstorm.

And yet, something was gnawing in her gut, an apprehension that something big was coming up upon her, something finite and deadly – perhaps even more so than the massive bear-dog that was slowly stalking the mixed grazers, intent on catching one of them for its breakfast. Helen knew that there was at least one more factor figuring in the success of the bear-dog's hunt: numerous low-land bogs that could spend doom for both predator and prey – but unlike her usual outings, today she just couldn't bring herself to care about that...

As the bear-dog stalked the primitive apes and horses, Helen was carefully looking at the watch in her current hide-out: soon it will be her hour and all will be over, one way or another. And then-

A very familiar – almost painfully so – sound coming behind caused Helen to whirl around, the hilts of her knives already in her hands. Then the time anomaly opened, and Captain Becker stepped through.

"You!" he said bitterly, "I thought that Danny and others have taken care of you, but I guess I'll have to do it instead-"

"Yes, I guess so," Helen said demurely, releasing the hilts of her weapons. "Try not to mess it up, would you?"

Becker blinked, as he realized that something was off in this situation, but suddenly, from behind him, came an unexpecting sound of a body hitting the floor. "Sarah? Are you okay?"

"Yes, yes, I am fine, I just feel a bit chilly, and, and-" Sarah rubbed her forehead, "I, I-"

"Excuse me," Helen quickly walked through the time anomaly, her backpack in her hands, and effortlessly pushed Becker aside. "Miss, can I ask you a question."

"Yes- Ow, why did you prick me?"

"Who are you?"

"I am Sarah Page, born in 1971, a professor of Egyptology, and now, apparently, of cryptozoology or mythology. Ow! You did prick me again!"

"Why did you end up working with the ARC?"

"Because when I was working in Egypt, some of the natives thought that it was _wrong_ that I was not doing a woman's work even though that I looked a bit like them, and they made it known. I responded in kind, one thing led to another that led to the area quite different from archaeology, and it was decided that it would be better for me to stay in England to let the passions cool down and for me – maybe, possibly – to rethink my political views. Probably not... Ow! Why-"

"Do you like working here?"

"Yes!"

"Even when you ran into a certain fungus from the future, either rust, or preferably grey-coloured?"

"Yes! It was grey-coloured! It killed several people- ow!"

"How did it kill them?"

"It spread by touch, like a mould or something-"

"Actually, it's more closely related to cordyceps fungi – did you feel it?"

"Yes I did – but my eyes feel worse."

"Really bad, right?"

"Yeah, did you do something-" Sarah grasped her forehead and screamed. Becker finally shook-off his stupor and aimed at Helen once again – but then he noticed something that caused him to pause: Sarah's originally dark eyes were darkening all over – the pupil, the cornea, the iris, etc were becoming a completely wrong dark grey colour, and they were bulging like a pair of overcooked eggs. The rest of Sarah's face was also contorted in a rictus of indescribable pain, even as Helen had the younger woman in a solid grip and slowly turned her whole body towards a wastebasket. And then-

"Get her to a bloody medical bay!!"

It seemed that Helen Cutter did possess a commander's voice among her several properties.


	2. Chapter 2

**A new start?**

_Disclaimer: All characters belong to Impossible Pictures. ™_

-2-

"Mrs. Cutter. Always a treat to see you," James Lester growled through his teeth. "What is going on, why is Ms. Page in our hospital wing with _all_ of our medical personnel around her, and why are you burning this wastebasket?"

"Because somebody had an invasion by a futuristic fungus several months ago and then promptly forgot about it. You were just lucky that this species was not the one adapted to parasitize on human-sized creatures, or you all would've died long before now," Helen growled back, turning back to Becker. "And you – can you check that there aren't any other members of your little group that aren't feeling the same effects as well? You know, sudden chills, possible headaches, odd behaviour quirks?"

"I am not sure – several of my men actually have began to complain about sudden chills recently, and there were several granted vacation requests, to Mexico and the like..." Becker trailed away, but then shook his head. "No, we seen what the future fungus does, there are visible signs-"

"In its active stage – yes, but this is a passive stage."

"There are stages?" Lester and Becker slowly exchanged looks.

"Yes, there are stages," Helen rolled her eyes. "Seriously, what are you all doing here? Hunting me down as well as everything else that comes through the time anomalies?"

"Well, if you haven't killed Nick and Stephen, maybe none of this would have happened; in fact, the only reason why I haven't ordered Becker to gun you down is-" Lester suddenly stopped, as Helen adopted a rather beatific facial expression, and on her it looked downright disturbing.

"Oh, Lester," Helen suddenly exclaimed, "I am flattering to be the woman of the hour, but the hour is up. Good-bye and good luck-"

And then she promptly fell over, dead.


	3. Chapter 3

**A new start?**

_Disclaimer: All characters belong to Impossible Pictures. ™_

-3-

Helen fell. She fell through the blueness into greyness into darkness – and then she landed. Into some riverside mud. "Ow!" She muttered crossly to herself, "this is embarrassing-" and then she sensed someone was starting at her. Instinctively, she whirled around – and saw them. Nick. Stephen. The two men whom she had once loved and had killed.

"You!" she whispered, "and you! I, I-" she collapsed on her knees. "I didn't mean for that to happen, Stephen – I was insane, humiliated by my own arrogance, by Leek's scheming, by Nick proving that he was smarter than _I_ – again. I wanted vengeance in my arrogance and stupidity, I tried to kill Nick because he was better than me – and you paid the price. I know that I cannot be forgiven-"

"Helen," Nick and Stephen carefully lifted her back on her feet. "We know. Death does reveal things that were hidden in life and we know that there was no true malice in your heart, only madness in your brain. You had the hubris to assume that you were unstoppable – and paid the price."

"Yes. I am dead now, aren't I? I saw myself falling from a cliff-"

"You are, Helen, but you are given a chance to live and perhaps to rectify your mistakes – if you are strong and smart enough to do so."

Helen kept her silence.

"Now go back and see what you can do about the bear-dog."

Helen opened her mouth to ask as to what bear-dog Nick was talking about, but suddenly there was a flash of electricity, a smell of ozone...

...and Helen opened her eyes in the ARC's medical wing, staring right at James Lester, who was looking intently on her.

"You're alive – good," he said brusquely. "I don't know how you did that, but you're not getting rid of us so easily. Now come on, we need to get to the airport – I had Becker's men detained and quarantined, Becker himself is on the way there to see if his people are infected or not, but I think that it would be a rather good idea for us to be there as well."

"What has happened to me?" Helen asked.

"You had a heart attack and collapsed – but we were able to drag you into the medical wing and electrotherapy was able to bring you back to life."

"Mmm... What about-"

"-Ms. Page? That's another story, one that we will talk later! For now, the airport awaits-"

Suddenly, there was a growl in the corridor, and a sound of something smashing. "No," Helen shook her head, remembering something from 'the other side'. "First we have to stop a bear-dog and send it back to Late Miocene. Lester, let's go."


	4. Chapter 4

**A new start?**

_Disclaimer: All characters belong to Impossible Pictures. ™_

-4-

"Lester! Where the Hell was you?" Becker snarled angrily as he returned couple of hours later. "You said that you and Cutter were going to catch up with us-"

"They would've, but you forgot to seal-off the time anomaly," Lorraine said meekly, "and a predator had wandered through, so we spent all this time getting rid of it, so Mr. Lester and your new friend are in the medical wing, getting patched up."

"Oh," Becker said, deflating somewhat, as he belatedly remembered that it was he and Sarah who opened the time anomaly in the first place. "Right. Um, I'll just go to the medical wing and talk with him, then?" He inhaled, hardly.

"Yes, you do that. Also, Sarah Page has regained consciousness but is still very weak-"

"That's great – not the weak part, but the first part."

"Yes, yes it is," Lorraine agreed, then added, more meekly: "Did they-"

"Don't go there, lady," Becker said roughly, then walked towards ARC's medical wing.

"Oh dear."

---

True to Lorraine's words, both Lester and Helen were in the medical wing, both wrapped rather tightly in bandages, looking worse for wear despite them. Sarah was lying on a bed next to them, a bandage wrapped around her eyes, looking even worse – drawn-out and pale.

"Sarah?" Becker said slowly. "Are you..."

"I am not a vegetable or a fungus," Sarah said, half-turning her head towards him, "if that's what you mean, but otherwise, well, as you can see I am a wreck, pun included."

"Sarah," Becker paused, sat down, and then continued. "In that case, you're simply lucky. The others – my men who caught the spores – they're all dead. They were told by the airport's authorities to go to their medical bay. They wordlessly complied, lay down – and died. That grey slime just oozed from their sockets and ears, their nostrils and mouths covering them all completely – from the inside out. Within moments men that I knew and fought with were transformed in mounds of sticky grey slime that we had to burn down with acid-"

"Becker, calm down, man! Do you need a soporific or something?"

"I don't know!" Becker's voice was a wail. "I've seen people die, including some that were under my command, but it was never like that, not like this-"

"Becker!" Lester's voice was firm even as Becker's was wavering. "Man! Tell us, do you want to quit? If you do, I can pull some strings, get you a job somewhere away from London-"

"No," Becker said, turning first white, then red. "I'll stay. The ARC does a job – a very important job, and I was never a quitter. I'm still in." He paused and looked at Sarah. "What about her, though?"

"Jenny Lewis promised to take care of her for now – if she is found fungus-free herself," Lester said quietly. "She is, in fact, is being checked-up even as we speak-"

"Don't speak about me as if I wasn't in the building, James," Jenny Lewis chose this moment to join the others – and froze, upon seeing Helen. "What is _she_ doing here?"

"She helped us – first with the fungus from the future, then with the bear-dog from the past," James Lester replied wearily.

"How do you know that she didn't set it up?" Jenny wasn't backing down.

"Because the bear-dog was kind of my fault," Sarah spoke up suddenly. "I got Becker to work our manifestation machine even though the fungus was already infesting my brain, and then, well, he forgot to turn it off. The animal then found our time anomaly and got in."

"And why did you make a time anomaly?" Jenny's curiosity was roused.

"To find Danny and the others – they went to stop Helen from killing off the humanity," Sarah's voice shook at the end. "Did they stop you?"

"Yes they did and I died," Helen said soberly. "Lester can testify-"

"Oh, this is getting ridiculous," Jenny interrupted the older woman. "Helen-"

"She had provided me with sufficient information oust Christine Johnson out of the ARC when you have quit, and has saved Ms. Page, and possibly the rest of the world from a fungus," Lester' voice was also quiet, but firm. "Jenny, I am sorry to say, but your leeway for righteous indignation is much less than Daphne and Shaggy's when they get back. Till then, Helen stays."

It was Jenny's turn to flush, but she kept her silence.

"Good, now I expect all of you to be here tomorrow, including you, Jenny, if you want your old job back."

Jenny kept quiet.

"Then until tomorrow," Lester finished, leaving no room for argument.

---

...As the door of ARC's medical wing closed behind the four retreating people (the others were helping Sarah to get to Jenny's car), Lester exhaled. The ARC has changed again, and he wasn't sure, if it was for the better. However, that was a statement that only time could tell.

End.


End file.
